Leadership training sans leaders
January 17, 2008 by Miki Saxon
I was fooling around with Google last night, reading about equine-guided leadership (leadership a la the Horse Whisperer) and plugged in “different kinds of leadership training” to see what would turn up. That search term yielded 5,600,000 results, whereas “how to write a resume” yielded only 1,200,000. Somehow, I expected the opposite results.
With so many flavors of leadership training and so many delivery methods you would think that our corporations, country and world would
be awash in leaders.
Nope. One needs only to look around to see that’s an erroneous assumption.
I see many ‘leaders in the instance’ among ordinary people, but it seems as if there are fewer and fewer as the scope enlarges and the need becomes more urgent.
To paraphrase an old song, Where have all the leaders gone, long time passing…?
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One of the reasons that we can have all those training and delivery methods with so little impact on leadership is that we confuse learning about leadership (which you can do in a class) with learning leadership which has to happen on the job. Leadership is an apprentice trade.
Well said, Wally. Not to mention the quality of leaders with whom so many serve their apprenticeship.
Great point, Miki. Role models, conscious or not, have a powerful impact on how we lead, unless we decide to break the mold.
True, Wally, but breaking that mold is just as difficult as avoiding the mistakes with your kids that your parents made with you. Often not the big things, but the small, unconscious stuff that does the damage.